Yuneec Typhoon Q500 4K – The drone that has increased competition

The brand Yuneec may have not been a well-heard name a few years ago for many readers, but right now is the talk of the town for sure. Yuneec is a Chinese unmanned aircraft manufacturer who has been working in this segment for past 15 years. It holds the expertise of delivering some of the most advanced multi-rotor drones in the market. Towards the end of 2015, the brand released Yuneec Typhoon Q500 4K quadcopter which has given a tough competition to the recent DJI series. The drone is specially suited for novice pilots for its many advanced and noteworthy characteristics.

Features

The features of Yuneec Typhoon Q500 4K quadcopter are as follows:

Firstly, starting with the basic structural specification of the quadcopter, the dimension is approximately 22.2 x 16.5 x 9.4 inches and weighs around 4 pounds along with the battery and payload attachment. The entire package contains the drone itself, two sets of rotors, all required plug-ins and adapters, a 16GB SD card with tutorial videos, the ST10+ Personal Ground Station controller and a built-in 4K camera.

The Yuneec Typhoon Q500 4K quadcopter is made of plastic with a slight edgy design due to its sweep back structure and curved surfaces. There are four propeller blades at each corner of the drone that run on motors placed in same position. There is clockwise movement for two propellers and anti-clockwise for the other two. The manoeuvring is done by controlling the speed of the motors.

The CGO3 camera of the quadcopter is fitted below the body and gives the feel of a webcam. It is held in place with the help of rubber joints. There are small motors present which level the vibrations caused by the drone. When the drone is flown in manual mode, then the pilot gets access of the pitch control of the camera. Another surprise feature of the camera is that, it can be used as stand alone with the help of CGO SteadyGrip stand that comes with the package.

The quadcopter has two communication channels, one between the remote control and the drone of 2.4 GHz signal and another between camera and display of 5.8 GHz signal.

The ST10+ controller is rather large and has two control sticks at the top and a classy 5-inch touch screen at the lower end. There are a number of buttons for different functionalities like running rotors, taking images or videos, alternating flights modes and such like. The display is quite clear. The manufacturer provides a neck strap and screen guard for the controller in the package. It is compatible with Android version.

There are various modes for flying the quadcopter. There are two options in the ST10+ remote to angle mode. In this, the drone flies normally but there is the option for speed rate control through the tortoise or rabbit mode. In the tortoise mode, the movement and speed of the quadcopter is restricted making it easier for beginners to control. In the rabbit mode, it becomes more flexible and manoeuvring is sharp. There are two additional modes, Watch Me and Follow Me which adds a special touch. In Watch Me mode, the camera is positioned at the operator while the drone movement is manual. In Follow Me mode, the drone follows the operator when any movement occurs. Finally, there is auto landing mode which allows a safe landing at a distance of 20 feet from the pilot.

The video and image capturing of the camera is 1920 x 170 pixels at 24 frames per second corresponding to 4K and 4096 x 2160 pixels at 25 frames per second. It also has the provision of shooting high definition video at 24, 30, 60 or 120 frames per second without deteriorating the image quality due to the presence of no distortion lens. The video is stored in MP4 format. There is 16 GB memory slot for storing video and images.

The Yuneec Typhoon Q500 4K quadcopter runs on a single 5,400 mAh lithium polymer battery which gives it a flight time of 22 minutes approximately on single charge. There is an additional battery included in the package, so that doubles up the flight time.

Down Sides

There are a few negative pointers of the drone as well:

The usage of the chunky controller might be confusing at times, as the functionality of the control sticks change with the flying modes.

Due to the noisy engines, the audio might be almost non-audible. So there will always be a need to manually edit the audio track.

Be it a novice pilot or someone expert in flying, crashes are inevitable. The most damaged parts of a drone during crashes are propellers. In this case, the propellers come in a bit more costly than others. There is also no option for third party blades.

Verdict

The price of the drone is around USD 1300 in Amazon. It might seem a bit highly priced, but the advanced features and accessories it provides makes it is a good buy. The smart carrying case and the additional battery give it a slight edge over other drones.

Review Conclusion

The Yuneec Typhoon Q500 4K is a smart drone with the advanced ST10+ controller, CGO3 camera and many other features. The noisy video quality may annoy you a little but the rest eye-catching features makes it stand out in the crowd. This is one of the best drones for sale.